Publishing VMware Digital Badges for Technical Certifications

Chris Wahl · Posted on2017-01-132020-05-06

I recently received an email from a company named Acclaim to accept a badge proclaiming that I had earned the VMware Certified Implementation Expert 6 – Network Virtualization certification back in 2014. I must have missed the memo on this, because low and behold there is an official blog post about it on the VMware Education and Certification Blog.

Since it seems this isn’t spam, I went ahead and took a peek at the badge site, seeing this little gem:

Acclaim is a badging platform that works with credible organizations to recognize, manage and share professional achievements. Acclaim is backed by Pearson, the world’s leading learning company. VMware has partnered with Acclaim so you can securely manage and share your professional achievements online.

Well, that’s kind of groovy, right? Other than the VCDX Directory, it was always a tad hard to prove your VMware certifications (unless you want to print out the certificates and lug them around to your job interviews). Because I decided to allow my VMware Certified Professional (VCP) certifications to expire back in August of 2016, it seems that the only thing I bothered to upgrade to version 6 was the VCIX-NV which I participated in during my journey to the VCDX-NV. Thus, only one email.

Upon accepting the certification, I was asked to build a little bit of a micro-site for my profile. There’s options to add a little biography, photo, and website. Here’s my fancy profile!

If you haven’t set up your profile yet and have VMware version 6 certifications, check it out! There’s even a decent FAQ available for the badging program from Pearson VUE.

One thing I really like are the details provided for the certification. It showcases relevant skills, what it took to earn the certification, and provides a link to more details. This could be helpful for job seekers because it makes the job of understanding a certification easier for head hunters and recruiters, and also for fellow IT professionals to see what their colleagues did to earn a certification. It would be really snazzy if all of the various certifications for vendors would appear here, rather than having to manually prune them on LinkedIn and such, especially since most everyone uses Pearson anyway.